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Obama on Native Tribal Sovereignty, the Freedmen, & NAHASDA

Obama and CBC oppose the passage of NAHASDA “as is”

in a march 13, 2008 letter to senate majority leader harry reid, members of the congressional black caucus stated that “members of the cbc will not support, and will actively oppose passage of nahasda” unless the bill contains a “provision that would prevent the cherokee nation of oklahoma from receiving any benefits or funding” until they extended tribal membership to the freedmen. the letter contained the signatures of 35 cbc members, but not the signature of milky house hopeful senator barack obama. the native american community began raising questions all round an obama presidency that could potentially support cbc efforts to undermine the rights of tribal governments to determine their own membership.asked to clearly state his opinion on h.r. 2824, obama’s campaign issued the following communication:”tribal sovereignty must intermediate that the village to resolve inter-tribal disputes is the tribe itself. our domain has learned with tragic results that federal intervention in internal matters of indian tribes is rarely productive; failed policies such as allotment and termination grew out of efforts to second-guess native communities.”clinton and mccain websites have no specific links or information to go to original american peoples or issues, while senator obama’s campaign has a main verso link directly to his website for “first americans.” further, a look at all three candidates’ effort teams reveal that senator obama has a citizen american community outreach coordinator and a 30-member tribal steering council. if clinton and mccain have a native american presence on their competition teams, it is well obscured.

obama’s counteraction to diane watson’s legislation will undoubtedly be met with unease by those of his fellow members of the cbc that side with the cherokee freedmen, but obama appears to be no outlander to the cbc’s disaffections. last year, online political leaflet thehill.com reported on the cbc’s anger with obama about rejecting an request to dispute on fox talk, and added that “obama has irked fellow cbc members by failing to respond to a entreat made early pattern year that he manageress a fundraiser for the black caucus’s state action committee (pac). [senator hillary] clinton received a similar invite and quick followed by by headlining a cbc pac fundraiser in march of 2006.” perhaps this is why the cbc recruited hillary clinton and not barack obama to be the boarder speaker at their 37th annual legislative colloquium, prompting the washington times to speculate that the cbc was quietly trying to advocate her bid for the presidency.”tribal dominion should at any cost that the place to resolve inter-tribal disputes is the tribe itself,” obama said.”discrimination anywhere is intolerable, but the cherokee are dealing with this issue in both tribal and federal courts. as it stands, the rights of the cherokee freedmen are not being abrogated because there is an injunction in diggings that ensures the freedman’s rights to programs during the pendency of the lawsuit. i do not endorse efforts to undermine these judicial processes and impose a congressional solution. tribes have a right to be self governing and we need to respect that, nonetheless if we fall out, which i do in this occurrence. we must have restraint in asserting federal power in such circumstances.”

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Madeleine McCann an ‘icon’ one year on

LONDON, England (CNN) — Madeleine McCann has become an icon for missing children, her parents said Friday on the eve of the anniversary of the British toddler’s disappearance from a Portuguese holiday resort.

Madeleine does seem to have become iconic of missing children, Kate McCann told CNN in an interview as the couple launched a fresh appeal for information about Madeleine’s whereabouts and vowed never to give up the search until she is found.

We believe there is a very good chance Madeleine is out there, Gerry McCann said. There is certainly no evidence to suggest otherwise and we are doing our best to find her. At the moment we’ve got a few pieces of a jigsaw and a huge gap and what we are trying to do is build that information.

The couple also reiterated their support for the introduction of a Europe-wide alert procedure for missing children similar to the Amber alert system in the United States, which advocates credit with cutting rates of child abduction.

We are interested in making a world safer for children, Gerry McCann said. This is something that could be implemented and it will save lives. Watch the McCanns explain how they are surviving

Madeleine, then age 3, disappeared from the family’s holiday villa at the beach resort of Praia da Luz on the evening of May 3, 2007, as her parents dined in a nearby restaurant.

Police later released sketches of a scruffy, mustachioed man who witnesses claimed to have seen carrying a young girl matching Madeleine’s description.

The chances of Madeleine being found are at least as good if not better than in those first few days, Kate McCann said. We know she’s been abducted by a man. Other than that we just don’t know anything. There’s a whole range of scenarios in which she could still be alive.

Since September the McCanns themselves have been considered formal suspects — or arguidos — under Portuguese law in the investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance.

The couple was stunned and dismayed by the development, Kate McCann said.

Our reaction was disbelief, first of all, and then devastation because suddenly they were looking at us — and if they were looking at us then who was looking for Madeleine? Who was looking for my little girl? It was devastating, she said.

The couple’s naming as formal suspects prompted a hostile backlash in some British newspapers. Gerry McCann reiterated that they have never been accused of having any involvement in their daughter’s apparent abduction.

Anyone can smear you and anyone can be smeared, he said. But we have never been accused of anything and we are trying to look forward. What we are saying is that Madeleine is out there and we want to find her.

The couple, from Rothley, Leicestershire, describe the night of Madeleine’s disappearance as a parent’s worst nightmare and the most horrific situation imaginable. Watch how the McCanns kept Madeleine in the spotlight

Every parent can imagine it but they will probably never feel that desperation, said Gerry McCann. Any parent knows that fleeting feeling in a park or in a supermarket: Where’s my child? And then there’s that terrible realization.

The McCanns say they are now trying to lead an ordinary family life amid the campaign to find Madeleine, and say their 3-year-old twins’ routine of swimming lessons and nursery classes has proved a welcome distraction from the search.

The pair are still too young to comprehend their sister’s disappearance and still include her in their games, Kate McCann says.

They do lots of role playing with toys in which they still include Madeleine, said Kate McCann. If she walked through the door, I think they would be like: ‘Madeleine’s back, let’s go to the park!’

But the couple admit that a normal life is impossible while Madeleine remains missing.

The concept of saying, let’s go out and have a nice meal even a year down the line that doesn’t hold any appeal or enjoyment, said Gerry McCann. We need to know everything and we will never give up.

You have moments when you are exhausted and you think you can’t do this anymore but it’s a second, a moment, Kate McCann said. Because you never give up. Who would give up on their own child? E-mail to a friend

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Obama odinga

Where Journalists’ Killers Go Free

By Katie Paul

It’s no surprise that journalism can be dangerous work. Reporters are routinely killed on assignment in conflict areas or covering other hazardous parts of the world. But what about those killed not in the course of their work but because of their work?

Like 54-year-old Philip Agustin, whose newspaper was about to publish a special edition on missing government funds in the Philippines when he was shot in the back of the head at his daughter’s home on May 10, 2005. Or Bautista Merino, 24, and Martínez Sánchez, 20, the hosts of a local radio station in Mexico’s tumultuous southern state of Oaxaca, who were driving home on a rural highway on April 7, 2008, when they were gunned down by unidentified assailants wielding assault rifles. Or Mahad Ahmed Elmi, a Somali morning talk show host shot dead outside the entrance of his radio station’s building as he arrived for work on Aug. 11, 2007. Later that day Elmi’s colleague Ali Iman Sharmarke was killed by a remote-controlled bomb that detonated under his car as he was returning from Elmi’s funeral.

No one has ever been convicted of these killings. Nor has anyone been brought to justice in 23 other cases of journalist murder in the Philippines, in seven in Mexico and in five in Somalia. And these are only a fraction of the more than 500 murders of journalists, specifically because of their reporting, since 1992, the year the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) began keeping detailed death records. While past awareness campaigns have looked at press freedom issues more broadly, the CPJ today came out with an Impunity Index to focus the spotlight squarely on those countries whose governments have consistently failed to solve these murders.

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Predictably, war-torn countries top the listwith Iraq in a category all its own, at 79 unsolved cases. Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Colombia follow in second, third, and fourth place. But what’s less predictable is that even in countries where mortar fire is a way of life, the overwhelming majority of journalists killed in the line of duty are felled not as unintended casualties of stray bullets but as targets. In fact, the CPJ says, the risk of being outright murdered because of one’s reporting is journalism’s number one hazard, responsible for 70 percent of all work-related deaths in the profession. What’s more, the majority of the 13 countries that made the ignominious list are not war-torn at all but established democracies, like Mexico and India, that have fully functioning law enforcement institutions.

“We wanted to focus on what we believe is the greatest single threat to journalists around the world and devise an index that was as objective as possible,” said Joel Simon, CPJ’s executive director. “So, as we go out and publicize this, what we’re basically saying to governments that might be embarrassed is, You can’t really argue with these numbers. The only way you can improve your ranking on this index is to solve these crimes’.”

Some of the murderslike the killing in Pakistan of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, or the shooting in Russia of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and American editor Paul Klebnikovdo attract international attention. But many of the slain journalists remain unknown and unheralded. Simon notes that over 85 percent of those murdered are local reporters whose investigative work often earns them the ire of the people they cover and who cannot up and leave when they are threatened. And when governments don’t look very hard to find or charge the killers, their actions set a chilling precedent for other reporters working in troubled spots. That’s a precedent the CPJ hopes its new report can counter.

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Officials: Zimbabwe rivals face runoff

(CNN) — A runoff has been declared in Zimbabwe’s controversial presidential election after officials said main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won 47.9 percent of votes, compared to 43.2 percent for President Robert Mugabe.

Since neither Tsvangirai nor Mugabe received 50 percent plus one vote, a runoff election is required by law. The Electoral Commission said Friday it would announce a date for the runoff election later.

But the opposition Movement for Democratic Change has disagreed with the result, The Associated Press reports, adding that MDC polling agent Chris Mbanga said: We have been overruled. We are in dispute. It is not fair.

The opposition said a meeting is planned for this weekend to decide whether to reverse its stance on the runoff.

Results almost identical to the official ones were reported to CNN Thursday — the commission’s first day of the verification process — by a senior official with Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party who did not want to be named.

A delay in announcing the results of the March 29 election has prompted accusations of vote-rigging and calls from around the world for Mugabe to step down after 28 years in power.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change has repeatedly said that Tsvangirai won the election but ZANU-PF alleges that the opposition has been engaged in election tampering. Read about the candidates in the presidential election.

Tsvangirai’s party says he won with 50.3 percent of the vote, enough to avoid a runoff under Zimbabwean law.

George Sibotshiwe, a spokesman for Tsvangirai, told AP that the MDC believed it would require at least another three days to examine the votes — in part because 120,000 votes were still unaccounted for.

We just said to the electoral commission we’re not moving forward until we understand where these 120,000 votes came from, Sibotshiwe told AP before the official result release.

The MDC has also maintained that it will not participate in a runoff. If it holds to that, then it would mean Mugabe would retain the presidency, the chief of the electoral commission, George Chiweshe, said.

Reports of violence against opposition supporters have emerged from Zimbabwe amid heightened tensions since the presidential election.

Zimbabwe’s religious leaders called for international help. People are being abducted, tortured, humiliated by being asked to repeat slogans of the political party they are alleged not to support, according to a statement from a coalition of Christian churches in Zimbabwe released two weeks ago. In some cases, people are murdered.

Government spokespeople have denied those reports or said they were exaggerated.

CNN and other major news organizations are banned from reporting from Zimbabwe, where there are reports of beatings and intimidation by the government against citizens who support the opposition.

Humanitarian groups told CNN that 105,000 people have been displaced because of the violence, and there were questions about who would come out to vote in the runoff.

Mugabe, 84, is the only ruler Zimbabwe has had since British rule of the former Rhodesia came to end in 1980 and was a hero of the civil war against the white government.

He has been re-elected several times, often either running unopposed or in elections that prompted charges of fraud and state-sponsored terrorism against opponents, and has consolidated his rule over all aspects of Zimbabwean life.

Two weeks before the last presidential election in 2002, which the MDC alleges was stolen, the government charged Tsvangirai with treason. He was acquitted. The MDC accused Mugabe of trying to eliminate him as a challenger.

Zimbabwe faced international sanctions after the 2002 election, including travel restrictions on Zimbabwean officials.

Once known as the breadbasket of southern Africa, it is now difficult to get basic food supplies in Zimbabwe. Inflation has skyrocketed to more than 100,000 percent, while food production and agricultural exports have dropped drastically. Once revered for providing some of the best education and health care in Africa, it now has one of the lowest life expectancies in the world.
found here.

Pastor returns to haunt Obama

(CNN) — Is there is a crazy old girlfriend, a weird uncle or a troublesome ex-husband in your past? I thought so. Most of us have someone that we’d rather not see again.

So share the pain and embarrassment that Barack Obama suffered this week, when someone he used to see most every weekend surfaced at a bad time, in a bad way.

It wasn’t a girlfriend, it was someone worse: one of his mentors, the long-time pastor of the Chicago church where Obama went to pray and connect with his community.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright became an issue earlier in the campaign when excerpts of his sermons began appearing on the Internet. Instead of the familiar invocation God bless America, he angrily said God damn America.

Americans were shocked to learn that he and Obama had a relationship going back years.

Obama used that setback as an opportunity to give a moving speech about race and anger in America, refusing to condemn Wright and only gently distancing himself from his remarks. Bad idea.

Wright retreated from the public eye, but this week he re-emerged, with a speaking tour and a vengeance. He reiterated and expanded on his remarks. He suggested Obama’s criticism was the work of a hypocritical politician running for office. He danced and clowned for television cameras, virtually guaranteeing he’d be back on the evening news.

The campaign has changed since Wright first appeared. Obama is no longer a fresh face on a winning streak. Lately, he seems tired and wounded after being criticized daily by Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain.

He’s been unable to expand his base of support — African Americans, affluent Whites and young people — into a consistently winning majority. Obama hasn’t been able to get enough working-class whites, in particular, to vote for him. Wright’s televised antics aren’t going to help.

After Wright’s re-appearance this week, Obama didn’t give another high-minded speech about big issues. He spoke like an exhausted and angry man, forced again to explain what he called ‘the divisive and destructive’ words of someone he once trusted.

Then he went back to the business of campaigning, probably hoping to keep his past… behind him.
found here.